The rapid evolution of virtual reality (VR) was on display in Venice this week, with visitors brought into the world of Wallace and Gromit and watching books come to life before their eyes.
Running alongside the world’s oldest film festival, Venice Immersive is tucked away on a former quarantine island that transforms each year into a showcase for the latest frontiers of entertainment.
This year showed how quickly the tech is evolving.
Photo: EPA
Some experiences had users interacting with the virtual environment using hand controllers. Thus Wallace & Gromit in The Grand Getaway plunged them into the world of the famous animated duo.
Players become Gromit, helping him fix his hapless owner’s contraptions and rescue them from an accidental trip to Mars. “The interactivity in those worlds is increasingly precise and diverse,” Venice Immersive cocurator Michel Reilhac said. “Makers are finding ways to hijack the technology and use it in really unexpected ways.”
Another experience used VR helmets to put several people at once in the studio of Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, enabling them to snoop around his workshop and watch as his famous Barcelona cathedral rise up spectacularly around them.
Artificial intelligence (AI) was an inevitable talking point, with one experience using a mix of two AI apps, ChatGPT and Midjourney, to ask users about their deepest thoughts before creating a bespoke story and images based on their answers.
LEAP OF FAITH
One of the most technologically impressive was Jim Henson Co’s The Storyteller.
Visitors don augmented-reality glasses to watch a 3D film come to life on a special book they hold in their hands, moving through different chapters as they turn the pages.
It is the latest innovation from VR pioneers Felix & Paul Studios, who have created immersive tours of the International Space Station, the White House during former US president Barack Obama’s tenure and LeBron James’ training sessions.
The interactive book was another “leap of faith,” cofounder Paul Raphael said.
“We wanted to realize the dream of what an augmented book could be,” he said — but that required “pushing the technology so much further.”
Cameras in the glasses read the surface of the pages and track their position in real time, which the algorithm, designed from scratch, uses to calculate where to overlay the constantly moving 3D images.
“The performance and speed at which it needs to happen is kind of insane,” Raphael said.
With the emergence of new headsets from Apple Inc and other companies, he said he believes augmented books could soon become widely available.
“It’s early days and there’s so much ground to cover,” he said. “Even after 10 years, it feels like we could do this our whole lives and still just scratch the surface.”
NO LONGER SOLITARY
The festival highlighted social experiences, particularly VR Chat, an online platform enabling users to meet and play in virtual worlds.
“VR Immersive is no longer a solitary experience,” Reilhac said. “It’s gained a social dimension — and that’s where it will find its ‘killer app’ that wins over a much bigger audience.”
As the tools evolve, creating these virtual worlds has become much easier, with free templates available for newcomers to use.
“There is so much available technology now that it can be easily adopted by people who are not professionals,” Venice Immersive courator Liz Rosenthal said.
They welcome the recent shift of attention from the metaverse to AI.
“The hype has moved on to AI, which is great, because it’s weeded out the people who were into immersive just for the hype,” Reilhac said.
As the tech evolves, there is a “greater depth of quality in the creative side,” Rosenthal added. “People are here because they’re passionate. It’s an exciting time to be in this space.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
RIDING AI WAVE: : Most of its NT$15bn capital budget would be spent on packaging technologies used in AI and HPC chips and advanced testing technology, it said Chip testing and packaging service provider Powertech Technology Inc (PTI, 力成科技) plans to increase this year’s capital expenditure by 50 percent to expand capacity to meet growing demand for advanced memorychips used in artificial intelligence (AI) products. The company proposed to spend NT$15 billion (US$460.94 million) to expand advanced capacity and equipment, compared with a budget of NT$10 billion it planned three months ago. “We are seeing a recovery in market demand as well as new business opportunities. We will spend heavily on advanced packaging” equipment, Powertech chief executive officer Boris Hsieh (謝永達) told investors on Tuesday. “We will focus on ramping
INFLATION WATCH: A rate hike in March would help keep inflation at 2.16 percent this year, although a weak currency and higher electricity rates are an issue, S&P said Moody’s Ratings and S&P Global Ratings have reaffirmed Taiwan’s sovereign credit ratings at “As3” and “AA+” respectively with a stable outlook on the back of high income and wealth levels, a strong institutional framework and robust external positions. The affirmations came as Taiwan’s economy is gaining momentum after quarters of slowdown induced by stubborn global inflation and monetary tightening. Taiwan’s strong fiscal and external buffers have improved relative to peers as evidenced by recent shocks linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing US-China technology dispute, the two ratings firms said. “Taiwan stands as the epicenter of the global semiconductor supply chain, accounting